Windows Vista is Here!

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 11:09 am

Have any of you wasted your money on it? What are your thoughts about it if you have tried it?

Rekarp · Post by **Rekarp** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 11:22 am

I tried it on a University Computer. I really liked it but I am going to wait till I can get a hold of a Student copy from the school before I buy it (Student software is cheap).

Post by **bicostp** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 12:27 pm

Please excuse the long ranty post below.

I'm using XP until support is dropped. Then I'm switching back to Mac OS. Vista is just 15 gigs of shiny BS lumped on top of NT. (Not to mention all the DRM crap...) No matter how much you polish excrement, all you will get is shiny excrement.

I don't even have Servcie Pack 2 installed on my everyday computers! I never run Windows Update! But by keeping backups of important stuff, and using good antivirus software, alternative browsers, and a hardware router, I don'thave any problems with security. Microsoft's service updates generally screw things up more than anything else.

And this is coming from someone who's going into the IT field.

Vista is the best thing ever for people like Joe Sixpack who just see shiny toys and helpful guides, but people who know better generally find it to be a big waste. (punch "vista world's longest suicide note" into Google for a good article.)

What gets me is that they break your computer's knees if you have high definition stuff. (it hinders figital audio and puts a screen resolution cap.) It virtually turns your computer into a Hypocondriac, thinking every port is an unsecure gateway to havoc.

Apparently Microsoft says Vista will be faster than XP. Uh-huh. Try running Vista on a Pentium 1 166 with 64 megs of RAM and then we'll see which is faster. It drags on a 933 mhz P3! If you have a core 2 duo processor, then yeah of course it's going to be faster. But for single-core processors that don't cost a grand, it will be at least as slow. XP pro boots in under 20 seconds on my PC. What about Vista? I hope to never find out.

One thing that pisses me off about Windows in general is how patronizing it is. Take the little yellow search ass-istant dog. I know I want to look for a file. I know where it is. I know what to type where... GAH jsut let me SEARCH my damn computer! I don't need to have my hand held through the entire process! And then there are the obnoxious wizards. The "Photo printing wizard", the "Zip file wizard"... If Microsoft made bathrooms they would make a "Butt wiping wizard". I don't want to go through 80 dialog boxes to extract an archive! WinRAR jusrt lets you right-drag the file to the destination and select "extract", "extract to a new folder", or if you selected more than one archive, "extract each archive to its own folder". What's so hard about that? And the Photo Printing Wizard gets in the way when I print a DVD cover, which has to be a proper size in order to fit in the case right. So I wind up printing to a PDF on my computer and printing that PDF on my dad's computer (where the color printer is). Annoying!

The blue theme is also pretty stupid. Does Microsoft think we have an IQ of about room temperature? Jeez, Ditch all the Playskool plastic, Microsoft. At least they still let you make it look like Windows 2000... which I do.

Penn and Teller should do an episode of their show about Windows. Reveal the truth! It's not safe, it's not secure, and it's not really all that different under the hood. A new name and some system-hogging shininess isn't going to change that! (I know Mac OS got all shiny when it went from 9 to OS X, but that was a complete, ground-up rewrite based off a UNIX core. Vista is another NT GUI.

In short, I think Vista is an over-hyped tweaked version of XP that's been dipped in liquid Plexiglass for that "children who are under three are sure to choke on it goodness". (To quote Strongbad) Play with the shiny feces if you want, I'll stick with the

cowsgoquack101 · Post by **cowsgoquack101** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 1:17 pm

Well, unlike Bic I have my upgrade coupon (it's around here somewhere...) for Vista. I won't be installing it just yet. I'm going to wait until I can get a new DX10 card. Supreme Commander, Crysis, Hellgate: London, Spore, and Shadowrun.

On a side note, hopefully ATI will come out with something incredible. I personally don't much care for Nvidia's cards. Yes they are sweet-a, but I like to support the "little guy". Boo iPod yay ZenVM!

ATOMICMAN · Post by **ATOMICMAN** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 1:45 pm

yeah im looking forward to hellgate london but as for vista, i really like 64x xp but im not too sure yet how the vista 64x will work out. ima wait till i hear more from actual users before i drop a couple of bills on vista.

Harshboy · Post by **Harshboy** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 2:24 pm

I'm thinking about it. My computer is more than ready for the Full Aero Experience in Vista, so I wont notice anything bad. Plus, Vista Home Premium only costs $120 at Newegg.

I'll upgrade soon, when the newest version of Nero is suported

Post by **benheck** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 2:56 pm

Vista looks like it was designed by someone who's watched Minority Report way too much.

I'll keep my clock cycles in programs, not glossy interfaces, thanks.

-Ben

Post by **bicostp** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 3:23 pm

Okay I just read that MicroSquash-Signed drivers are required for 64-bit editions of Vista.. WHAT the EFF? There go all the Netgear drivers, and all the other drivers for companies that don't want to help build Microsoft's money mountain. And on top of that it cripples high definition multimedia playback, and requires some form of verification on high definition devices or it cripples those too!

Vista is the best example of monopoly abuse since they integrated IE into Windows 95 SR2.

Aside from shine, there really isn't any reason to upgrade. (Especially since a couple of the "vista ultimate enhancements" are avalible off the Microsoft Research Labs' FTP site for XP users.. FOR FREE)

The question is, would you pay $400, $300, or even $150 for crippleware?

Source:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/pl ... gning.mspx

@ daguuy: You're right. XP won't be dropped anytime soon. Most large buisnesses use it, and need a lot of time to test it with their specialty hardware and software. They need to know it's reliable. And people like my dad don't have PCs that are capable of running any form of Vista. (733 mhz P3, but it runs Outlook and Word perfectly, it's stable, and it gets the job done.) Most large corporations switched to SP2 a couple years ago, after disabling everything it added or screwed up so their software would run. Vista is Joe Sixpack's Windows, not Professional Pete's.

daguuy · Post by **daguuy** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 4:17 pm

Vista's just a 15gb lump of DRM and shiny crap. I don't like shiny graphics that eat ram, I just want a computer that does what I tell it to do. Microsoft will have a hell of a hard time dropping XP anyway with all the millions of XP users and people without top-notch computers.

kidw/32+systems · Post by **kidw/32+systems** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 4:24 pm

As far as I know vista is crap and worthless. My school gets new computers every school year so I will have to use it but not pay for it so then its good.

Whats the extras in Ultimate?

jones · Post by **jones** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 4:29 pm

daguuy wrote:Vista's just a 15gb lump of DRM and shiny crap. I don't like shiny graphics that eat ram, I just want a computer that does what I tell it to do. Microsoft will have a hell of a hard time dropping XP anyway with all the millions of XP users and people without top-notch computers.

It's actually 10GB FYI. This is after a fresh install. Just because a software vendor says a certain amount of disk is required for installation doesn't mean that all of it is used up post-install.

I'm actually posting this from a machine with Vista Enterprise that I just installed (painless install by the way). I'm going to reserve judgment until the next podcast (look Ben, a topic!), because I obviously haven't had a chance to explore it completely yet. I'm going to throw it on PC's of varying age and specs since I have some laying around in my cube.

Oh, and trust me, for those of us in the world of Corporate IT (Yes, it's as painful as it sounds) Vista does have a number of appealing features and it has the potential to be much more than just a "shiny interface" as a number of people seem to think. Whether or not it makes good on the promise of these features is the important detail that determines the necessity of making the move from XP to Vista.

The business world is the cash cow for MS, not the consumer market. Quite honestly I currently have no intentions of going to Vista on my home PC. XP works great for me so I don't see any reason to change. Maybe when I buy a new computer sometime in the future. For work it could be quite another matter entirely however.

Post by **Sparkfist** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 4:53 pm

Microsoft Vista = Mac OS X

Now that Vista is released upon the masses let the jokes about performance, resource abuse and price begin. I will likely not buy a copy of Vista, the only thing that would get me on a Vista machine is a job, a damn good/fun game, or if they offer it free while I'm still in school (via MSNDANN, or whatever).

The price tag that Vista has is too much and the improvement over XP are not enough to give it value for me to buy it.

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 5:18 pm

Now I'll post my views (I was at school when I started the topic and didn't have time).

I think Vista looks like a bloated piece of poop. Why should the OS come with everything (like anti-spyware) and have it almost impossible to remove? Why should an OS need to be on a gaming rig to run at a decent speed?
And why should it cost as much for the software as it does for the system to run it on (based on getting Vista and Office 2007 Ultimate)? This is mainstream software, I could see it if it had a smaller amount of users such as a CAD program. I'd say that all your paying for is a new GUI for what you already have.

I personally will likely never get Vista unless I have to. The new time we upgrade our computer, the OS for it will be either Mac OS X, XP, or linux (or maybe all 3 if we get a Mac Mini or iMac).

Harshboy · Post by **Harshboy** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 5:27 pm

vskid wrote:I personally will likely never get Vista unless I have to. The new time we upgrade our computer, the OS for it will be either Mac OS X, XP, or linux (or maybe all 3 if we get a Mac Mini or iMac).

You don't need a Mac to run OS X, OS X 10.4.8 runs perfectly on my Dell

vskid · Post by **vskid** » Tue Jan 30, 2007 5:35 pm

Harshboy wrote:
vskid wrote:I personally will likely never get Vista unless I have to. The new time we upgrade our computer, the OS for it will be either Mac OS X, XP, or linux (or maybe all 3 if we get a Mac Mini or iMac).
You don't need a Mac to run OS X, OS X 10.8 runs perfectly on my Dell

I know that. Its just that my dad thinks it awesome that iMacs are as small as they are, so he'd likely want one of those or a Mini, and he has the money.

So if/when we get one, boot camp and XP are going on it to keep gaming easy.